Friday, February 24, 2017

Sporting Sign First Round Pick, Colton Storm

Sporting Kansas City added to their roster today, signing first round draft pick Colton Storm to a one year deal with three option years. Storm, the 14th overall pick in January's Superdraft becomes the 28th player on the roster for Sporting KC as they head into the final weekend of preseason. The 28 players gives Kansas City a full roster, although Diego Rubio is likely to start the season on IR recovering still from his ACL tear, and there have been reports that rosters will be expanded to 30 as long as spots 29 and 30 are occupied by homegrown players, which KC could do with Erik Palmer-Brown and Daniel Salloi.

So far this preseason, Storm has played in two preseason games for Sporting, both during the club's first phase of preseason in Tucson, he's played no games in the Desert Diamond Cup so far. Storm becomes the fourth player signed who's seen predominately as a right back. While Peter Vermes has said he can play both sides, most people seem to see his best location at right back. This will give Sporting KC four players on the roster potentially to play right back, with Graham Zusi looking to be the presumed starter followed by Saad Abdul-Salaam, Igor Juliao and now Storm. After Juliao's performance at times though in KC's 6-2 loss to New England, there certainly looks like there could be room to move up in this position.

It will be interesting to see what Vermes does with these four though, you have to assume Zusi and maybe Juliao could get a look further up the field at times. You also have to wonder if Storm could spend a good portion of the season on loan to the Swope Park Rangers to get him game time.